You can say a lot of things about the US military, but they’re absolutely qualified at how to fuck shit up. They’re not perfect, but they have good technology, basically unlimited money, and they get plenty of practice.
Just don’t use guerilla tactics lol. I completely agree with you, but that notorious war wargame exercise where fake Iran stomped the USN comes to mind. And, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
I’m not sure I understand your issue with the wargame? Is it because the USN lost to Iran in the wargame? It’s pretty well understood the US stacks the odds against themselves during wargaming. Something about you learn more from losing than winning
IDK about Iran, but the US ran a wargame for the Iraq war before they did it, and they had a pretty capable American commander running the fake-Iraqi side, and he absolutely fucked up the fake-Americans and then they stopped it and rewound and said he wasn’t allowed to do the things he did the first time around and that time the US won.
All the strengths and weaknesses of the US military brass on full display all in one little anecdote 🙂
And yes guerilla warfare will fuck up any military that relies on money and technology, but in particular the US is especially vulnerable to it for a couple different reasons, I think
The MC Fatwa from /r/warcollege needs to be brought over to Lemmy.
No mercy for the heretical Millennium Challenge posters. If you’re credulously posting this as an example of how Iranian motorcycle messengers driving ICBM equipped rowboats can beat carriers, you really need to do more reading on this topic. The faithful are commanded to shun these individuals and we will send them from our lands, inshallah.
Van Riper was told to cut that shit out because he basically cheated. His “motorcycle couriers” operated exactly like radio communications, transmitting orders instantly with no loss or disruption. The US fleet was placed miles offshore by the simulation because of peacetime shipping lanes instead of at standoff range like in a real conflict. His “missile boats” were a bunch of fishing boats and yachts carrying AShM larger than the boats themselves. He blanketed paratrooper LZs with chemical weapons because he knew where they were dropping ahead of time.
Then after being told to stop, he went crying to the media instead.
I looked this up. This is the reddit post, and this is the interview that it links to. I’d recommend reading the actual interview even though it’s a little technical, instead of getting it through 3-4 layers of telephone-game from people who may or may not know what they’re talking about or how to spell Van Riper’s name.
I, honestly, couldn’t completely make sense of the interview because of how deep into the details Kernan goes. I do note that he strongly disagrees with the thing I said that the second run of the simulation was railroading a certain particular result, and goes into some details of problems in the simulation that Van Riper then exploited, but he also says this:
I’ll be straight up with you. I was the reason why Paul Van Riper was at Joint Forces Command. He’s a very controversial individual. He is a good warfighter. I admire and respect him very much. I brought him in because he is controversial.
We were looking at it from an experimental concept perspective. He was looking at it from an exercise perspective. So I think if you – you know, if you neck it down and look at it just from his perspective, an awful lot of what he had to say was valid. But if you look at it from what we were trying to accomplish in the way of setting conditions to ensure that the right objectives were satisfied, the experimental objectives, it’s a much bigger picture, broader picture.
Now maybe that’s just him being diplomatic and supportive not wanting to throw the guy under the bus. And like I say, I don’t know enough about the details to really talk about what he’s saying in terms of picking out details of what I was saying that’s wrong. But to me it sounds like on the overall point, he’s saying the same thing that me and @BombOmOm@lemmy.world were saying: Van Riper was trying to win, blue team was trying to run a productive simulation, and those aren’t exactly the same thing and they had to override him on some things to make the exercise into the second one of those things. But that doesn’t mean he’s completely wrong with everything he did.
Sounds like the dude played to the rules of the exercise and not the intent. He’s a d&d power gamer that ruined the campaign.
they stopped it and rewound and said he wasn’t allowed to do the things he did
There was always that one kid, you’re like “I got you!” and then he’s like “nuh uh no you didn’t…” and makes up some shit
I mean I get it
The guy got to make his point; I’m sure they’re going to adjust some things in their strategy because of things he did. At the same time, you’re gonna go talk to congress or the president or something and lay out what you want to do, and they’re going to ask, okay what’s the prediction for what’ll happen? And you say well sir we actually did a little war game for it, and the Iraqis crippled most of our ships and the landing failed and we’re still in the Persian Gulf for the most part but it’s mostly a big clusterfuck at this point. So we’re good to move forward, right?
I’m not trying to make a value judgement as to whether this is good/bad/etc, but it is kind of amazing Iran is still able to throw any weight around on the world stage.
They’re not friendly with the US or most of it’s Allies obviously, but they’ve also made enemies of Saudi Arabia (and by extension Saudi Arabia’s allies). They have almost no powerful friends, at this moment in time, Russia might throw them a bit of help, but it looks like their only ally of consequence is India.
Saudi Arabia is a US ally though
Operarion Praying mantis in few words: “Iran you’ve been a naughty country, we are going to sink you frigates until we feel sorry for it and stop”.
